Der Tempelturm Etemenanki in Babylon.

• Author: Dunham, Sally

By HANSJORG SCHMID. Deutsches archaologisches Institut, Abt. Baghdad: Baghdader Forschungen, vol. 17. Mainz am Rhein: VERLAG PHILIPP VON ZABERN, 1995. Pp. xix + 154 + 42 plates + 18 plans + 1 jacketed plan. DM 135.

This monograph is a careful study of the archaeological remains and possible reconstruction of one of the most famous monuments of ancient Mesopotamia: the neo-Babylonian ziggurat of Marduk in Babylon. Its author undertook an archaeological investigation of the ziggurat in 1962 (pp. xi, xiii).

Schmid's first two chapters survey the history of knowledge and research concerning the ziggurat, beginning with a brief examination of the traditions and legends that survived in ancient non-Mesopotamian sources and ending with the German excavations on the ziggurat in 1913, the publication of the Esagila Tablet and the various reconstructions and controversies that these two events engendered. Chapters three through six present Schmid's own results: a reevaluation of the 1913 excavation report, the coordination of its data with the Esagila Tablet, and the results of the 1962 excavations on the core of the ziggurat (ch. three); a reconstruction of the history of the building and destruction of the ziggurat (ch. four); a study of the various arrangements used in Mesopotamia for staircases to temple platforms and ziggurats (ch. five); and a detailed discussion of the model of his proposed reconstruction (ch. six).

The German excavations of 1913 discovered a massive mudbrick core, ca. 61 m square, which had been enclosed by a baked-brick encasing ca. 15 m thick. The baked-brick encasing had been mostly pilfered in the nineteenth century, but enough remained to determine its outline and the outline of the triple staircase on its south side. The baked-brick structure was attributed to Nabopolassar, who says in his foundation cylinders that he rebuilt the Etemenanki with baked bricks and asphalt. Nebuchadnezzar also said in his inscription that Nabopolassar had worked on the ziggurat - purifying the foundation and raising four baked-brick walls thirty cubits high, but that he, Nebuchadnezzar, had finished the work, filling the foundation with a thirty-cubit-high filling and finishing the upper part of the ziggurat (p. 80). A fragment of a cylinder of Nebuchadnezzar was found in the rubble of the northeast corner of the baked brick encasing of the ziggurat (Wetzel and Weissbach 1938:33 and 45, exemplar C).

From his investigation in 1962, Schmid...